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As cities go, then Barcelona on the North-Eastern coast of Spain has almost everything. History, cultural diversity, iconic buildings and even its own strong separatist tradition in language as the local dialect is Catalan and it is the sixth-most populous urban area in Europe.

It's place on the Balearic Sea gives you a very wide selection of services, not only to anywhere for in Europe, but all of the Mediterranean countries that are very easily accessible and North Africa is well within reach as well for most narrow-body services.

Spain was quite devoid of good quality scenery only not too long ago. But today there is now plenty of choice for domestic services but the best is still mostly on the eastern coast side. But LEVC - Valencia Manises by DAI Media is first rate as is LEXJ - Santander and LEZL - Seville Airport by tdg. There is a LEPA - Mallorca and Pilot+Plus's LEIB Ibiza and a great small airport in Soria Garray. But the best combination is with JustSim's excellent (now updated to X-Plane11) LFMN - Nice with their new scenery here which is LEBL - El Prat airport Barcelona.

First impressions

My approach was from the north or flying in by Southern France over the Pyrénées Catalanes range. The aircraft is Rotate's MD-88 and I have the xEnviro weather plugin running to create the realistic weather conditions.

Once you clear the range you pick up the STAR/RNAV "ALBER" via "Gerona 114.10 GIR" for approach to RWY25R.

I have the winter textures installed and as winter in Spain is not a natural usual occurrence, but this year it is and they have had even snow in Southern Greece, and so I am vindicated. The heavy low level cloud is making it hard to find the runway, time to trust my instruments.

The entrance into Barcelona is picturesque. Helping in the view is that there are a lot of available objects to enhance the scenery and one of the best is Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot. This loads in a lot of Barcelona icon buildings that make up the scenery, as well JustSim adds in quite a few of their own, and the most impressive are the main loading cranes on the docks directly in line of your northern arrival path.

The cranes are a great visual view to the direction of the airport because most arrival routes tend to come in on a slight angle along the coast, in most cases you do a slight right turn to finals on the approaches RWY25L and RWY25R and for most of the arrival sequence the airport is quite hard to focus on... then it is suddenly right there and right on your nose.

This arrival was tricky in this service as well with a bad 19knt crosswind, so I crabbed all the way down to the threshold.

Runway layout is interesting with two runways in 07L/25R and 07R/25L being situated almost north-south, but the third 02/20 is a cross runway that crosses 07L/25R and in operations on either runway you have to aware of any traffic using the other live runway.

The older terminal two is on the right with a 25R approach and is now mostly abandoned today except for a few LCC's (Low Cost Carriers). The bulk of the traffic uses the newer Terminal One that opened in 2009. Lighting is excellent on the ramps at Terminal One.

And the view from the cockpit was excellent, however the terminal's window lighting was quite subdued and very dark, and should have been brighter even in this light dusk light. And so it all looked like the outside lights are on, but no one is home.

Taxiway E3 took me to the south side of T1 and my gate at stand 256. Opposite both sides of the terminal one's 60 main jetway gates there are plenty of remote stand parking areas, but none of the jetways are yet animated but noted by JustSim that the feature is coming, ditto for ground traffic animations as well that was noted as a "work in progress".

Again in stopping at the gate there was the constant feeling of that no one was home.

Overall though I found the arrival very good both visually and atmospheric as the terminal design work and external lighting was very well done.

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Barcelona El Prat Airport

IATA: BCN - ICAO: LEBL

07L/25R 3,743, (12,281ft) Asphalt concrete

07R/25L 2,660 (8,727ft) Asphalt concrete

02/20 2,528 (8,293ft) Asphalt concrete

Elevation AMSL14 ft / 4 m

Overview

LEBL intergrates really well into the X-Plane landscape, there are no tell tale boundaries except a slight one on the far south-west and the traffic/roads system goes well into the airport as well from the same south-west, from a visual point of view LEBL is perfect.

The port area make a significant difference to the scenery as noted on the approach phase above. It an area full of cranes and storage tanks, but well done.

The north-west boundary is the older part of El Prat, with the original airport areas... so we will start there.

Terminal 2

Ignore everything the other side of RWY 07L/25R and you would have a pretty good idea of what El Prat looked like forty years ago.

Top north is the large well modeled Iberian maintenance hangar with in front a lot of remote GA and private jet ramp parking available.

Centre field is a fire station and the old control tower and terminal and now administration buildings.

A big point of this scenery is the ground markings and layout is exceptional, all the complex (and it is very complex) taxiway designations are very well noted and signed, you will still need a ground map to work the ATC correctly, but the signage helps a long way in finding your way around.

Ground textures are excellent with great variations in detail and the many different surfaces, and note the excellent 3d grass centre

The old original terminal is now split into three Terminal 2A, 2B and 2C and currently Terminal 2A is unused. Terminal 2C is used only by Easyjet and Easyjet Switzerland flights, with flights to the UK using module M0, whilst flights to the rest of Europe use module M1. Terminal 2B the oldest terminal dating back to 1968 is mostly used by Ryanair and others like Transavia. And T2A is adapted for large aircraft such as Boeing 777. The terminal is again also split into Modules, where flights to schengen destinations use Module U and flights to non-schengen destinations use Modules W and Y.... got all that?

The terminals are well modeled, if a lot unused.

Far north-west is a large cargo area with a huge amount of ramp space. There are a few objects lying around but overall it is empty, It is however a good cargo zone to use.

Control Tower

To the east there is an excellent radar installation and the stylish modern control tower.

Detail is first rate and the tower can be seen all over the scenery because of its position. But the tower view setting is not done, so your view is somewhere over on the ground in the cargo area? not very good for a scenery of this class and the sad missed opportunity of a great view of both the 07L/25R and 02/20 crossed runways.

Terminal One

The stylish Terminal One was opened in June 2009. It is the fifth largest in the world. It has 45 new airbridges that are expandable up to 60 parking gates. This terminal is also capable to embrace large aircraft like the Airbus A380-800 or Boeing 747-8I.

A note on the Barcelona to Madrid airbridge, which was one of the most busiest in the world. Started on 4th November 1970, Iberia began the "Air-shuttle" service between Barcelona and Madrid-Barajas. This Barcelona–Madrid air shuttle service is known as the "Puente Aereo" (in Spanish), or "Pont Aeri" (in Catalan) or literally "Air Bridge", and was the world's busiest route until 2008, with the highest number of flight operations (971 per week) in 2007.

A few years later, in 1976, a terminal (next to Terminal Two as noted above) was built specifically for Iberia's air-shuttle service. Now it runs out of Terminal One.

El Prat's Terminal One was always going to be the central focus of this scenery, and it doesn't disappoint on that level here. It is very well modeled and the glass looks better in the daylight than at night, however it will be interesting to see if JustSim upgrades the glass here with X-Plane11 reflections like they did just recently with their LFMN - Nice scenery. It would certainly add a bit more depth to the textures and make it more realistic again. Airbridges are excellent but none are currently moving, as noted animated jetways are coming.

Landside is good with great X-Plane traffic running right into the airport, even if it does come out of a few buildings? The intergration of the 3d terminal ramps into the default roads are clumsy, not aligned and are a different colour and that makes them stand out, and with no animation either makes them also empty.

Static Aircraft

Using the LEBL - Barcelona scenery from JustSim can be a lonely affair. JustSim don't provide any static aircraft with their sceneries and that is highly noticeable here at El Prat as for it's sheer size.

So you can hit the overlay editor to add in a few aircraft or use the utilities of either X-Life from JARDesign or WorldTraffic from CJS. I used WorldTraffic and it worked very well in filling out all those empty open spaces.

There isn't any specific ground routes but there is a LEBL pack as part of the "Catalonia Airports" package. But you are going have to edit (cull) a few ground routes as every gate is full, and there is a huge list of 1140! ground routes and that is in "Arrival" only?

A tip to cull a few spaces is Gate 256 - take out all runways routes listed as "02-1378" for gate 226 all "02-1363" and for gate 242 delete all "02-1371" files in both Arrival and Departure folders and that trick just saved you 4 hours work.

JustSim do note that the WorldTraffic ground routes have been done, but I think they are confusing that with the X-Plane built in ground routes as WT routes have to be supplied and installed directly in WorldTraffic (they go into the WorldTraffic Ground routes folder), and here they have not been added into the package for installment.

Night Lighting

Best to time your arrival in Barcelona for the dusk period as the lighting is effective and visually exciting. LEBL - Barcelona looks great at night as does the city itself. Runways and taxiways are well lit on approach and on the ground and you get the better highlights of the extra provided 3d object buildings to the north-east of the airport.

As noted in first impressions the ramp and apron lighting is excellent, but the glass is a bit dull on T1, but better on T2 of where it is wasted.

Services

Domestically Vueling dominates El Prat, with the flag carrier Iberia well down the order in 7th. Most carriers are LCC, but the British, German and French Flag carriers do most of the European uplifting.

1. Vueling -15,912,302 : Europe, Africa, Asia

2. Ryanair - 6,785,995 : Europe, Africa

3. EasyJet - 2,799,947 : Europe

4. Lufthansa - 1,407,346 : Germany (Munich and Frankfurt)

5. Air Europa - 1,283,721 : Europe

6. Norwegian Air International - 1,240,280 : Europe, (future U.S.)

7. Iberia - 1,184,660 : Spain

8. British Airways - 829,335 : Great Britain (London)

9. Air France - 739,442 : France (Paris)

10. Wizz Air - 651,098 : Europe

International

Top 10 international routes note the British love their Spanish holidays, as most routes are for Tour operators and LLC operations. Emirates (Dubai), Aeroflot and American Airlines Delta and American are the only few long haul users.

With a lot of the scenery that we cover here at X-PlaneReviews. it is becoming more and more prevalent lately in the fact you get the feeling the scenery has been released quickly and before it is finished, and you get that feeling here with this JustSim El Prat version. Maybe it was to catch in with that Christmas or holiday sales season, but that is not a great business plan overall.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the LEBL scenery as it is, and it is fully usable. But for the sake of a few weeks or a month to tidy up the edges and complete the whole package is not going to change the bank balance that much.

No animated gates and vehicle animation is noticeable, Checking that the tower view is correct, more ground servicing equipment, a manual that is missing, no charts and so on, not big things and all supposedly coming down the line... but it is still important when delivering something that is supposed to be fully completed, not that this aspect is not the usual practice in aircraft, but you do expect it in scenery.

The glass on Terminal One needs another look, it needs to be more alive at night than a blank dark tint, and a great advance would be to make really sure that if you don't want to supply static aircraft then supply the tools to run the airport as a live entity anyway (Certainly X-Plane11 will change that aspect with better static aircraft tools).

Most really good sceneries are important for the reason that has nothing to do with their design and visual appeal. Position, position, position is the hotel's mantra and so it is with a great airport scenery. But in X-Plane position is no good if you can't use the scenery to get the total effect of arriving and being in that place.

But with LEBL - Barcelona you certainly get everything in here that you require and with also the great position to use with most services from Europe and Mediterranean countries. So the overall scenery is excellent and well developed as well and there is no doubt that LEBL will certainly play a big part in my X-Plane network in the future, so as an investment LEBL is top notch.

I personally really like JustSim's sceneries, they deliver a lot of value and here at El Prat you certainly get that, but just tidy up the rest of the to do list before releasing next time.